Roast Beef & Rain

Happy Wednesday Thrifties!

It isn't actually raining here, but it is quite dark & gloomy. 

My house is still mostly clean from yesterday's extravaganza! Tonight I will tackle the bedroom. Wish me luck! I also need to get a head start on packing for the weekend. We are heading south, back to the city, for my little sister's 18th birthday.

Today was a run around day. I attend a ladies group on Wednesday morning which is a great outlet! It is so nice to visit and encourage each other, even if I am the odd one out since I have no kids yet. I officially know all there is to know about childbirth and its complications. My poor mind will soon wish some of it was a surprise.

I have a yummy pot roast simmering away for this evening and 3/4 of a bottle of wine. Sounds like I will be having a great night with the laundry. 

Here are a few pictures of my beautiful clean house. I also have a picture of my repurposed paper towel holder. It is now housing my napkins. 




 

Also the fun zebra mat is actually the plastic-y table cloth that I purchased for $2 at Walmart yesterday. It looks super cute and should make for easy sweeping and wiping. I think I will buy another because the real mat I bought for the top of my stairs is a bit small for the space. You need to step off of it to even close the door, so it is a bit useless. Lesson learned, I will stick to my tablecloths and save that mat for when the outside scraper one wears out.

Sadly I have nothing else to report. My hubby and I are looking for a house to buy but it is a very confusing process. Waiting for the perfect place for now. :)

xoxo Thriftess

Squeaky Clean!

Good evening Thrifties!

I am pleased to announce that I actually cleaned my house today. Legit dragged out and scrubbed up clean. I noticed that our new roomie M had started to wear sandals in the house. Horrified, I set about cleaning my floors. One thing led to another and the whole main area of my house is clean. Shoes are away, coats are hung, electronics are dusted, and the floors are shining!

I am especially happy because I dealt with my clutter zones. You know the places that are just all too handy for setting things down on and never picking them back up? My clutter zones are the wide ledges both in my entry and the one that divides kitchen from living room. Also the shelf under my coffee table and a desk that I had in the living room. I have sorted and put away all of our crap and clutter and now my house looks delightfully bare. I also removed the offending desk to our spare bedroom because I never wanted it in the open to begin with.

My cleaning frenzy also counted as exercise. (Dispute it, I don't care)

I also didn't have to make dinner because we had a birthday party to go to tonight :) added bonus!

To maintain my cleaning I bought some much needed rugs for our entry. Sadly I paid retail at Walmart, but I did save a few bucks by buying a vinyl tablecloth for one of the spots. I am going to try it out as a frugal option ($2 vs. $15 and is much larger.) I will let you know how it goes!

And now.... I am seriously tired.

XOXO Thriftess

Monday again?!?

Blerg.

Good afternoon Thrifties!

Why oh why must Monday always come? And when it comes, why must it always find me in the dirty messy heap of my own humanity?

Cleaning

That's right, Monday morning has found me again in a house disaster! The extent of my cleaning lately has just been keeping head above water. In addition to our new boarder, we had my husband's siblings stay with us off and on during the week and then again for the weekend. They left yesterday, but not without leaving their mark. Not only in dishes, but also his sister "E" had pink eye. I am a hypochondriac at the best of times, and although I swear that my eyes are itchy, no one else seems to have been infected. I spent a lot of my time wiping and re-wiping door knobs and light switches.

So! Cleaning today:

Kitchen! Top to bottom: counters, dishes, sink, table, stovetop, & floors.

I also had to wash the sheets for the guest room and have yet to make up the bed. So add sheets to your list too :)

Weight Loss

My healthy challenge for this week was to start doing some exercise. Being that spring is pretty much here, it would be a great time to start walking again -- and then I opened my blinds and it was snowing this AM and I changed my mind. However I did record a yoga program that I saw on TV and I am going to try it out today!

I also have been experimenting with replacing pasta with spaghetti squash. Squash are low-cal and obviously healthier than the carb and calorie packed pasta alternative. They are also one of the only "veggies" that I find very filling. So far I have used it in two soups (chicken noodle included), with stroganoff style meat sauce, and as fettucine alfredo. It has worked so well and has such a mild flavour that I can see doing this on a regular basis. The problem with the squash is that for the right texture it works best to half or quarter the squash, bake for 30-45 minutes, allow to cool in the fridge and then tear into strings. For obvious reasons it is not as easy as cooking pasta! This week I plan to buy a few squash, bake all at once, string, and then freeze in portions. Hopefully this works well and combats the cook-time problem. I will keep you posted!

Saving

I bought my cloth napkins! They were on sale at Superstore so I ended up getting 12 napkins for $8, which was less than what it would have cost me to make them myself and I really hadn't found any at thrift stores. The moral of the story is that for the cost of a large pack of name-brand paper towel, I will NEVER buy it again! The only other barrier is mental, because it still feels wrong to wipe dirty fingers on my pretty cloth napkins!

In other news Gail Vaz-Oxlade's new show "Money Moron" is set to premiere on Slice very soon! I have already watched and re-watched every episode of her shows "Princess" and "Til Debt Do Us Part" and they really light me on fire to be good with my money. I have been stalking her for a whole year waiting for this show and it is finally here! My understanding of the show is that it will be similar to Princess but not just girls. Evidently there are men out there who are bad with money.... who knew.

I vow to be back soon! I need to get my life on a schedule here.

XOXO Thriftess :)

The Thriftess & Company

Hi all,

It has just been a flurry of activity at my little house! My spare room is clean finally, and a visitor has landed in our home for a few months. A cousin of my husband's, hereafter referred to as "M", needed a place to stay while going to school. He called on Thursday and arrived on Tuesday, so some frantic cleaning went on!

Also I am cooking a turkey this week. I love turkey and it has gone on sale after the Easter holidays. We also didn't get any at Easter this year, both of our hosts made other things. The scary part is that I have never made a turkey before, because I have a mother for those kinds of things. However the turkey I bought cost barely more than a frying chicken, so if ruined, I will not cry. (I still will, I hate wasted food more than just about anything)

I realized that I haven't actually talked about anything frugal for a while. So I'll sum up a few of my activities lately:

Grocery

I have started the "kitchen garden" on my windowsill! This is where you grow what you can just on your windowsill. I know that you can grow green onions for sure, this was my starting point. All you do is save the white bottoms from your green onion and put them in a glass of water on the windowsill. Change the water periodically (whenever it looks murky) and within a few days you should start to see the ends grow slightly from the middle. Before you know it you have green onions! Then you just trim what green sprouts you need for each meal.

Another item I have seen grown first hand is Romaine lettuce. Same thing as with the onions, just soak the butt end of a head of lettuce in a cup and it will start to sprout new leaves from the centre! 

At a ladies craft night I also won a kitchen herb garden. Three little pots with five different seed options. So I have that to start as well.

I am really excited about these projects. I looove saving money at the grocery store!

Hair
 
Next I got my hair coloured at 50% off this week. Getting my hair done is my one big frivolity. :( I try my best to find someone cheaper that I still like, but so far I have tried two different people on three separate occasions and I am not very happy with the results. 

The thing with hair is that it is so easy to get caught up in a false economy. If you find someone to do it for $80 instead of $150, the shock at payment time is easier to swallow. However if they don't do the colour right (I like my foils) and roots are obvious at 4 weeks instead of 8, no money was saved. 

I was lucky enough to read my flyers one week and colour appointments on Tuesdays in April were 1/2 off with a haircut, AND they were giving away a free product! While still expensive it was an amazing deal because the girl also gave me a protein treatment during the colouring and my hair looks way way better than the other ladies I have tried here. Sadly, I can't justify continuing to go to her unless my hair lasts 12 weeks. (which would be miraculous.) So after this I am back to perusing the online classifieds for another person who works at home.

But still, the moral of the story is "Read your flyers!"

Paper Towel

Finally, my next big saving project is to cut out paper towel. I ran out of paper towel about a month ago and forgetting to buy it when it was on sale (I always go store brand on the special Sunday-Monday only deals) I have refused to buy it since. To my surprise I haven't actually missed it! The only time I have remembered that we needed it was when we had company for dinner and I had to give them dish cloths for napkins -- embarrassing? Yes, but also stupid. Why wouldn't I just buy cloth re-usable napkins if that is the only thing that I need paper towel for? Napkins were kind of a tacky use of paper towel anyways.

 For cleaning the bathroom I have just been using two cloths. Mirror, faucet, toilet with a dry microfibre and some cleaning spray (in that order and then straight into the washing machine after) and then counters, sink, and tub with a wet rag and spray. 

Clearly for spills there is no reason that you couldn't just use a few rags, and the space they actually take up in the washing machine doesn't really count for anything. 

And voila! I will not buy paper towel again. Greenpeace thanks me.

What can you go without? 

xoxo Thriftess